Dehesa Peñalba

Styles

Principal grape varieties

Terroir

• The zone is formed by the passage of the Duero river, which has created river-floodplain terraces of depositional materials — principally sands and gravels — on the valley floor at an approximate elevation of 720 m.
• The delimited zone is set into the valley floor, with low-slope, uniform farmland below 5%, bounded by two higher plateaus (páramos) at elevations of 800–840 m.
• The soil is characterised by the presence of stones, gravels and sands, the latter reaching average values of 78%, compared with around 60% in the surrounding terrain of the western zone.
• The terrain offers free-draining, dry and sandy soils at the surface — warm but with a cool subsoil and good water reserves — and is poor in organic matter and nutrients.
• The microclimate of the zone has a mean annual temperature of 12 °C and a frost-free period of 206 days, longer than the fewer than 200 days recorded in the surrounding areas.
• The zone is sheltered by two calcareous-marly plateau formations on the northern and southern slopes, and bounded by a woodland of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) along the entire southern and western perimeter, as well as by the Duero river to the north and east.

• Harvest is carried out by hand into crates, with the grapes held in a cold room to lower the temperature to between 5 °C and 10 °C before sorting on a selection table and elevation by conveyor belt without the use of pumps.
• The process includes a fermentative and post-fermentative maceration of a minimum of 21 days, followed by ageing on lees prior to malolactic fermentation with the addition of micro-oxygenation.
• Tempranillo is the most important variety in the vineyard, trained on trellises with grass cover in the inter-rows and meticulous canopy management, while Syrah, with its longer cycle, is the second most representative variety.
• In 1995, replanting of these lands with medium-to-long-cycle vine varieties was resumed, and a winery equipped with oenological technology was built.

• The wines are reds of sustained colour, with high depth of colour and a blue-tinged red hue of great stability, and very good capa.
• They display a firm structure owing to their high and stable polyphenolic fraction, with a sweet and long-lived tannin, resulting in elegant, medium- to full-bodied wines that are savoury, voluminous on the palate and long in finish.

• The warm, poor soil with its high content of sands, stones and gravels promotes grape ripening and skin pigmentation, yielding grapes with greater concentrations of anthocyanins and tannins.
• The natural barriers that shelter the zone buffer extreme climatic conditions in spring and autumn, extending the vine's growing cycle and enhancing both the pigmentation and polyphenolic content of the grapes.

Facts drawn from the specification's terroir-link section by automatic interpretation — see the specification (pliego de condiciones).

All appellations in Spain

Sources

• Specification (EUR-Lex, single document)
• eAmbrosia register (EU) — File number PDO-ES-02592
• Official trade body site — Bodegas Vizar — DOP Dehesa Peñalba